Kincaid's Battery eBook

“Yes! nothing short of it! Our defenses
become death-traps and slaughter-pens—­oh,
how foully, foully has Richmond betrayed her sister
city!”

Flora felt a new tumult of joy. “That Yankee
fleet—­it has pazz’ those fort’?”
she cried.

“My dear young lady! By this time there
ain’t no forts for it to pass! When I left
Fort St. Philip there wa’n’t a spot over
in Fort Jackson as wide as my blanket where a bumbshell
hadn’t buried itself and blown up, and every
minute we were lookin’ for the magazine to go!
Those awful shells! they’d torn both
levees, the forts were flooded, men who’d lost
their grit were weeping like children—­”

“Oh!” interrupted Constance, “why
not leave the forts? We don’t need them
now; those old wooden ships can never withstand our
terrible ironclads!”

[Illustration: “No! not under this roof—­nor
in sight of those things”]

“Well, they’re mighty soon going to try
it! Last night, right in the blaze of all our
batteries, they cut the huge chain we had stretched
across the river—­”

“Ah, but when they see—­oh, they’ll
never dare face even the Manassas—­the
‘little turtle,’ ha-ha!—­much
less the great Louisiana!”

“Alas! madam, the Louisiana ain’t
ready for ’em. There she lies tied to the
levee, with engines that can’t turn a wheel,
a mere floating battery, while our gunboats—­”
Eagerly the speaker broke off to receive upon one
hand and arm the bounty of the larder and with a pomp
of gratitude to extend his other hand to Anna; but
she sadly shook her head and showed on her palms Hilary’s
shattered tokens:

“These poor things belong to one, sir, who,
like you, is among the missing. But, oh, thank
God! he is missing at the front, in the
front.”

The abashed craven turned his hand to Flora, but with
a gentle promptness Anna stepped between: “No,
Flora dear, see; he hasn’t a red scratch on
him. Oh, sir, go—­eat! If hunger
stifles courage, eat! But eat as you ride, and
ride like mad back to duty and honor! No! not
under this roof—­nor in sight of these
things—­can any man be a ladies’
man, who is missing from the front, at the
rear.”

He wheeled and vanished. Anna turned: “Connie,
what do your letters say?”

The sister’s eyes told enough. The inquirer
gazed a moment, then murmured to herself, “I—­don’t—­believe
it—­yet,” grew very white, swayed,
and sank with a long sigh into out-thrown arms.

XLVIII

FARRAGUT

The cathedral clock struck ten of the night.
Yonder its dial shone, just across that quarter of
Jackson Square nearest the Valcours’ windows,
getting no response this time except the watchman’s
three taps of his iron-shod club on corner curbstones.